Airing dirty laundry

[bloomz]

Last nite I was tinkering at my shop, and found this letter on an old Zip disc I have there, in a folder aptly titled "Crusade". Just an example of how hard I tried back then to "educate florists" and get us working together. I delivered this letter personally to every florist in 4 cities around us and gave thema verbal earful to explain it. It was a great effort to this day. Anyhow, here is the letter:

Monday, July 06, 1998

Re: Big order collectors and deceptive advertisers in our phone books.

Dear fellow Valley Florists,

I don't know if this upsets you like it does us, but we hate companies like National Flora & Express Worldwide Florists, non-florists taking our profitable orders right out of our market area through half page ads in Corvallis Yellow pages. And, since we already spend over $700 per month for yellow pages, we don't want to try to outsize them. We'd like to spend less.

There may be a solution. What if they couldn't find any of us to fill their orders?

Saturday I got a call from Express Worldwide asking if I could still do a delivery. I said, "yes, I am still delivering, but I have made a decision that I am no longer going to fill orders from my competitors at a loss, and if I were to underfill it, so I could make a profit on the order, I wouldn't want my shop name going out on it." This guy was really shocked, like he had never heard this before. So I am sure he got on the phone and found one of the others of us in town to take it.

Checking the new phone directory, the major offenders as I see them are National Flora, who sends everything FTD since they are now a direct partner with them, Express Worldwide Florist, who send Teleflora. There are others, but they don't have huge half page ads, and maybe aren't such a threat to our profits.

We feel the ethical responsibility to the purchasing public is to fill incoming wires to value, at a loss, with the odd hope that the recipient may become a future customer, and fear filling them undervalue so we can make a profit, because of the alienation that can come from it. We think that people who spend $ 40 or $50 on an arrangement should get a $40 or $50 arrangement. The customer only knows they spent $50 or whatever on flowers. They don't know to separate the $7.95 to $14.95 service charge from the actual cost of the flowers. So we fill their order for the amount we have, lose money on it, and make somebody mad because they didn't get their money's worth. And they never do business with us again, because our shop name is on the delivered product.


Anyway, the point of this letter is that if we all got kinda together and refused orders from our competitors, they would quit wasting $350 + per directory per month (that's in our small area) to take out the biggest ads in our phone book! And we could again dominate our local market.

This morning I sent an order to Corvallis Florist and see who fills it, and how they transmitted it. It came on Mercury from Original's Flowers & Gifts, Lindenhurst, New York, their AFS code is 41-7610, their FTD code is 38-3737, and their Teleflora code is 44-4193. I think they also have Carik, but don't know the code. The 800 # of the shop (not the deceptive number) is 800-331-2168. We dislike deceptive advertisers even more, (we have 2 Corvallis Florists here, ever seen one? Albany has Albany Florist, Lebanon has a Lebanon Florist, Ashland has a phony Ashland Florist, and a REAL Ashland florist, now that would REALLY tick me off…) but think there's stuff in the works to eliminate them, probably years away for Oregon, tho. In a few days I will spend some more and test the other one, whom is adamant about not telling customers (me) who and where they are (they hung up on me). This one Monday (Original's) was the second of the two in our Regional phone book white pages. Their (deceptive) 800# is 967-3466. The other one is called All American Flowers & Gifts, in Mt. Laurel, NJ. Their AFS code is 47-4215 and their Carik code is NJ1000. 800# is 769-5752. Call them up and ask where they are… I refused an order from them a couple of days ago also, I guess they were using an old AFS directory. And I got a bit of a chance to tell them what I thought of them, before she hung up.

But the only way we can see to eliminate this is for us to get together and refuse their orders.

So anyway, we are now starting this, refusing orders from out of town competitors who advertise in our phone book. We have posted a memo by the phone so our employees will know who to refuse orders from. If we unite in this, we can all sell more flowers, and keep local money local, between the florists who live and work here. Like we have heard before, there's enough business here for all of us, but I don't think that includes these "out of towners". We are also taking this a step further and refusing orders from 800-FLOWERS (TF 44-3653) & 800-SENDFTD (except we're not FTD) FLOWERCLUB (Florafax) and similar companies that compete with all florists on a nation-wide level.

Let us know what you think. Thanks.

Jonathon & Twila,

Expressions In Bloom

Copies to:

(everyone in the Regional Telephone directory)

Corvallis

Leading Floral
Willamette Valley Flower Market
Shonnard's Florist
The Flower Mill, etc.
The Flower Garden
Penguin Florist
Albany
Bill's Flower Tree
The White Rose
Safeway Food & Drug
Lovelace Floral
Flowers n More
Steve Yutzie Floral Company
Heidi's Hallmark
Lebanon & Sweethome
Betty's Flowers
Angel Hearts
Poor Richard's Florist
Roger's Floral Shop
Sweethome Florist & Gifts
Jefferson Floral

Success rate? I would give that a big ZERO.

Moral of this story (to me) I have given up the good fight on this level. I now think possibly the best thing that can happen is for it all to shake down, and I agree with a colleague here that we would all be better off if half the shops in the country would go out of business.


That's starting to happen already. More than one very long term shop has recently closed its doors (one in biz since 1906). WHEN AND IF that finally gets all done, then and only then will we be in control. I envision a utopia time when 800TFTD will want a dozen roses in my city and I can tell them the price will be what I want it to be, like $750. Hey, I can dream along with the rest of us, can't I???


Like my good friend Gfloral pointed out to me on the phone the other nite - How you gonna educate consumers when you can't even educate florists???

 

[sfox]

Ftd Was The Only One To Benefit

How about looking at the expulsion of those two ordergatherers as a plus for FTD. First, florists griped about these companies. Both of the Big 2, saw an opportunity. Cut both of those organizations loose and do away with two competitors.

FTD didn't have to buy them, just cut them off from their source of making money, an electronic sending system and rebates.

Maybe it's wasn't about the little guys getting ripped off, instead it might have been all about the big Guys being able to make more money.

 

[Rock]

You know Jonathan, GFLORAL is right; if you can't educate those whose livelihood it affects then you'll have little luck educating the public. I remember your bringing this up in the beginning of the floral boards and getting many strange 'looks' as if you were crazy. When you stop and think about it after 7 years how many florists get it??? 1%?? I'm probably being generous then. Since most florists aren't business people they look at you/us suspiciously and write you off as nuts; actually they just think you have an ulterior motive...hell, some of them do get it but they have the ulterior motive!
I've accepted the reality that we're living in a bubble; because of the fact that the OG's are taking the net profit out of many shops they're going to close and they will be "comfortably numb" ; they'll never understand why! If only they'd listened.......

 

[bloomz]

Rock I'm sure and a few others remember when the battle cry was


REFUSE ON!!!

I embarass myself now at how naive and immature I was then, just like I will in a couple years at how naive and immature I am now. Nature of life for me...